We Were Strangers Once

by Betsy Carter

  “If you mean how am I doing at the grocery store,” said Egon in German, “then the answer is not so good.” He talked about the long hours, about how Art was always watching him, and about the customers, some of them so rude and cruel. “They use words like Kraut and tell me to go back where I came from. It scares me, like it is happening all over again.” He told Meyer that no matter how many Tums he took, his stomach always burned. “I have become so bashful in the past four months that I cannot even look people in the eye anymore. Think of it, looking in people’s eyes was my job. Now I keep my head down and wait to be spoken to. Sometimes I feel as if I am becoming invisible.”

  “That’s how it is with horses,” said Meyer. “When we would have a new horse on the farm, at first you could never look it straight in the eye. They’re nervous animals, and if you stare right at them, they see it as a sign that you will hurt them. Once they trust you, they’re completely friendly and affectionate. You’ll see, these people have to get to know you.”

  “That is very nice of you to say,” said Egon. “And so unlike you, Meyer. Are you feeling sorry for your old friend?”

  “Ha,” said Meyer as he slapped whipped cream onto his éclair. “Why should I feel sorry for you? At least you get to work inside all day.”

  For $1.10 an hour, Meyer walked up and down Seventh Avenue between Thirty-Fourth Street and Thirty-Fifth Street, wearing a sandwich board advertising Kallen’s, a clothing shop for men. When people asked what he did for a living, the author of The Pale Princess of Prussia would answer, “I am fortunate to remain in the print business.”

  Egon studied his friend’s wild hair and jumpy brown eyes and saw the same eager boy he’d met in Berlin nearly twenty years earlier. Here he was, one of Germany’s most promising young writers, trudging up and down the street hawking men’s suits. How could that be?

  Egon put his elbow on the table and rested his chin on his fist. “We’re like fledglings fallen from our nests onto the cold pavement.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Meyer snapped. “We’re the lucky ones. May I remind you that in gay old Deutschland, those thugs are beating up Jews on the street and burning down synagogues? We got out in time. Would you really rather be Doktor Schneider working in your tidy Frankfurt office waiting for the knock on the door? Look at us. Here we sit in a bakery shop in New York City eating our favorite desserts. It could be worse. Well, it was worse a moment ago, when you talked about the fledglings falling out of their nests. Please, from now on leave the metaphor-making to me.”

  Embarrassed, Egon stared down at the cake he had dunked into his coffee. “I admire you, I really do. Of all of us, you probably have the worst job, yet you manage to remain so kind and upbeat,” he said, trying to sound ironic. “Tell me, how do you do that?”

  “Ach, Egon,” said Meyer, sliding his chair closer to his friend. “You are amusing when you try to be sarcastic, but I must give you credit for trying. If you really want to know the secret of my unique personality, I’ll tell you.”

  Sparring with Meyer was one of the few things that still felt normal to Egon. “Of course; I’d give my eyeteeth to know what makes Meyer Leavitt tick,” he answered with mock enthusiasm.

  “For one thing, I never thought I’d make it this far. I don’t mean to America, I mean in life. I come from a family of farmers, and the fact that I’m not a farmer means I’ve already exceeded my highest expectations. The rest of my family, they’re so caught up in their lives over there that no matter how many times I beg them, they won’t even consider leaving,” said Meyer, shaking his head. “I’ve written a book, and I intend to write more books. These crappy jobs we have and the shitholes we live in, this won’t go on. Take yourself out of our little world and out of 1938. Look five and ten years down the road. In five years, we qualify for American citizenship. Will you be working in a grocery store? Will I be walking up and down Seventh Avenue selling men’s pants? Will Max still be selling wrenches in a hardware store? You bet your boots we won’t. Even if you want it to, life doesn’t stand still. So imagine what happens when you will change and work hard. We were successful in Germany and we’ll be successful here. I’m not going to stop writing; you’re not going to stop being a doctor because some maniac kicked us in the nuts. Now we get up and we begin again.” He raised his left eyebrow to let Egon know he was finished.

  How like Meyer to turn friendly repartee into serious exposition. Yet Egon inhaled his friend’s determination, felt buoyed by it. He was the one who suggested they walk the fourteen blocks back down to Meyer’s new apartment on 186th Street.

  As was typical for this time in late November, the sun set at four thirty, and the air smelled of rotting leaves. A raw chill whipped off the Hudson, and Egon blew into his hands to warm them. “Overcoat season, eh?”

  “So begin the meager days,” Meyer said. “The sun is thin and the city turns a grimy gray. The cold can be punishing, and you feel as if you’ll never see green or be warm again. And then comes spring, which, if you believed in God, you’d swear was his atonement for winter. It’s like a miracle, you’ll see.”

  But Egon had trouble seeing beyond the dread of tomorrow. He’d become one of those people who hung a calendar on his wall and made pencil slashes through each day as he finished it. Sunday afternoons were the worst. That’s when the image of Art’s pudgy face would start to hover and the odor of meat would fill his sinuses. He tried to push back fears of what was happening back home and the terrifying possibility of it happening here, and the words of his litany became meaningless. By the time they reached Meyer’s apartment, he felt the familiar burning in his stomach.

  They stood in the foyer as Meyer searched for his keys. The hall smelled moldy. Except for the splints of light from under the neighboring doors, it was dark. When Meyer finally did unlock his door, he switched on the overhead light and shouted triumphantly, “Home sweet home!”

  The apartment was the size of their dormitory room in Berlin, and about as handsomely furnished, with a bed, two folding chairs, and a metal card table. In the corner was a small icebox; next to it, a food-stained stove and an overhead shelf that held two plates, two glasses, and an eggcup. There were no pictures on the wall, no rugs on the floor, only a tower of books beside the unmade bed. The grimy window above the kitchen sink looked as if it hadn’t been opened in years, and the place smelled of stale cigarette smoke.

  “Your asthma, it is all right here?”

  “As long as there are no cats, I breathe perfectly,” said Meyer.

  Egon offered a thin smile and leaned against the dim white wall, his arms folded in front of him. An ambulance was passing, and he held his hands to his ears, still unaccustomed to the insistent sound of it.

  “How do you do it, Meyer?” he asked when the awful sound stopped. “I mean, really, how do you do it?”

  Meyer took off his jacket and hung it behind the door.

  “I do it because I have to do it.” He shrugged. “Really, Egon, what choice do we fledglings have?”

  Meyer was right about the New York winter: It was angry and merciless. Trees shed their bark, birds hid in their hollows. People bent against the wind as if fighting a crowd, and the sky seemed always to be the nameless color of phlegm. Only the brick buildings stood resolute, impervious to the snow and bluster.

  Egon had been living in his own apartment on Bennett Avenue since the end of August. It was a one-bedroom on the sixth floor of a typical six-story building, though this one had an elevator. The kitchen had a partition that created a separate eating area, and if he stood at a particular angle and looked north through the living room window, he could see the edge of Fort Tryon Park and a slice of the Hudson River. He would stand at that window with his binoculars and watch the birds. Out of habit, he wrote down the names of the ones he recognized and sketched the ones that sat still long enough to be captured. He hung his mother’s framed pictures on the bedroom walls. The rest of his furniture consisted of four folding chairs, a green
velvet armchair that someone had put out in the trash, and a used oak desk, on which he placed his parents’ books and his mother’s gold pocket watch. He rested the brass plate with Doktor Egon Schneider engraved on it against the telephone. It felt good to put out the little things that used to shine. In the back of his dresser drawer he kept the artificial eye.

  Though the building’s incinerator was in the basement, seven stories below him, he had to open all the windows when he came home each night to air out the smell of burning garbage. The radiators never spit up enough heat, so at night he wore a sweater over his pajamas and covered himself with a quilt and two blankets. Even then he had trouble getting warm. At the grocery store, the door was always swinging open and shut; the cold inside was almost as relentless as it was outside. By mid-January, the streets were covered with snow, and customers tracked in gray footprints, turning the sawdust into mush. Egon wore a jacket over his shirt and slipped on gloves when he wasn’t helping customers. The tips of his fingers were always white and bloodless.

  Determined not to give in to winter, Egon kept up his morning routine of feeding the pigeons in Fort Tryon Park. The only other people there were those walking dogs. Occasionally he threw a stick for a Dalmatian or stopped to pet a schnauzer, but mostly he kept to himself. He always sat on the same bench overlooking the river, and even before he poured out the crumbs, the birds would gather as if they were expecting him.

  On one frigid morning in January, he didn’t linger. As soon as he finished, he crumpled the bag, threw it in the trash, and headed up the hill. Ahead of him, obscured by a clump of holly bushes, he heard a dog howl and a woman scream: “Speedy! Stop, Speedy! Oh, Christ.” He ran and caught up with the woman, who had reached the animal and picked him up; a Chihuahua, he guessed, with a pointy rat face and blood streaming from his left eye.

  “Stupid squirrel!” she said to Egon. “I tell him, ‘Don’t chase the damn things,’ but does he listen? Never. Now look. He finally catches one and the SOB rips his eye out. My poor baby.” For a little dog, Speedy was making sounds as long and low as a bull in heat.

  Egon hesitated for a moment. “I am a doctor,” he said. “The eye is my area of specialization. Perhaps I can help you.”

  Ophthalmology was one of the few medical disciplines that applied to animals as well as to humans, and in Frankfurt, Egon had successfully treated a few of his patients’ dogs. He suspected that Speedy might have a scratched cornea, which would need to be cleaned up as soon as possible so infection didn’t set in.

  “Yeah, sure, a doctor,” said the woman. “It’s gonna cost me a small fortune, isn’t it?”

  “It will cost you nothing, madam.”

  “Well, if you’re kidding, this sure is a bad time for a joke, ’cause I gotta tell you, I got nothing. Me and Speedy, that’s it.” Her nose ran and mascara zigzagged down her cheeks. Egon wasn’t sure who was the sorrier sight, she or Speedy.

  “I can assure you, I am serious. Come.”

  “What’ve I got to lose?” she said, sizing up Egon. With the bleating dog in her arms, she followed him until they came to his building. By then, he had figured out how to explain to Art why he was late. “A small boy was injured and bleeding, and I was able to treat him.” Not a complete lie. Speedy was small and male. So what if he was a Chihuahua?

  He told the woman to have a seat at the dinette table and took Speedy into the bathroom. With a towel soaked in warm water, he tried to dab at the black swirls of blood under the dog’s eye. Speedy bared his teeth and kicked his scrawny legs. Egon picked him up, sat on the toilet seat, and placed the dog on his lap. “Of course you are scared,” he said. “I would be too.” He rubbed the animal’s stomach and started to sing “Hänschen Klein,” a song about Little Johnny, a boy who leaves home but comes back because his mother is so heartbroken.

  Speedy splayed his legs and relaxed into Egon like a chicken waiting to be stuffed. Egon cleaned the wound, then shone a light into the dog’s eye. The light didn’t bother him. No corneal damage. A relief. The squirrel had missed its mark by a hairsbreadth. Egon kissed Speedy’s belly and whispered in German, “You are a lucky dog.” Egon felt lighter than he had since he’d come to America. For once he was visited by happy memories: his father’s sweet voice when he talked to the animals, sitting and drawing with his mother in the Stadtwald.

  Somehow, the dog’s good fortune seemed to portend his own. He spied a bottle of Kreml Hair Tonic in the medicine chest, which he’d bought at half price when he first started working at the grocery store. The Kreml was a luxury he used sparingly. Now he poured a generous gob into his hands and rubbed it through Speedy’s mussed coat until it was shiny. He tucked him under his arm and opened the bathroom door.

  The woman was still at the table. She’d combed her hair and put on lipstick. The mascara tracks were gone. “He is fine,” said Egon, hoisting Speedy like a trophy. She snatched the dog and held him to her breast. She called him Speedo, Speedling, Sweetie Dog, and Speedattle, and told him he was a beautiful boy. She rubbed her nose in his neck. “You smell good too.” Only then did she seem to remember that Egon was also in the room. “You saved his life. I must owe you something.”

  “Nothing, you owe me nothing.”

  “I don’t understand.” She shrugged.

  He raised his hands as if in surrender.

  “Well, I’ll tell you this,” she said. “You sure do give refugees a good name. There must be something I can do for you.”

  That word again. He’d come to despise it. Refugee. It sounded like something used up and thrown away. It even looked ugly when he read it in the newspaper. Re-fug-ee. Re-fuse. Forbid. Ref-use. Worthless.

  But the woman had offered a favor, and he would not re-fuse it.

  “Yes, there is something you can do.” He spoke tentatively. “I am a doctor. Maybe tell your friends in the neighborhood they can bring their animals to me.” He took a piece of paper and printed his address and phone number under his name: Dr. Egon Schneider. It was the first time he’d written those words in more than six months. He knew he was taking a risk, but he would only take in neighborhood animals.

  In Frankfurt, he really was Dr. Schneider. In this country, where his license and medical degree were not recognized, they were a deception. But at this moment, Speedy and his owner gave life to the old reality. The woman studied the paper. “Hmm, Dr. Schneider. Okay, I’ll do that. Lotsa luck.”

  Meyer might be right, he thought. He wouldn’t work in the grocery store forever. In five years, he would become a citizen. Maybe it was possible that he might practice medicine again, maybe this time, veterinary medicine. He would find out what was required to get his license. If he could afford it, maybe he’d take some night classes.

  He started to accumulate books: some in English, a few in German: Veterinary Practice; A System of Veterinary Medicine; An Illustrated Guide to Canine Pathology. Using his American dictionary, he eked out the basics. The illustrations were so poor, nothing like the precise details of his mother’s drawings.

  The first call came two weeks later, on a Thursday night. Cat, hit by a car, broken leg. Then dog, shot with a child’s BB gun, four stitches. Another: hamster with red lumps on its backside; rabbit, scratched bloody. Egon came home from the store one night to find a large brown bag at his door. Inside was an emaciated mongrel, an older dog. His white fur was filthy and matted, and he was missing a chunk of his right ear. Worse, he smelled like rotting pumpkin. Egon washed the dog and clipped his fur. He fed him rice and, in the days to come, scraps of salami and ham from the store. At first the dog seized up when Egon tried to pet him. He’d take his food from the bowl, hide it in a closet or under a piece of furniture, and eat only when Egon was out of sight. He slept in an old carton lined with a blanket at the foot of Egon’s bed. Egon named him Johnny, after the boy in the song, but when he called, “Johnny, come,” the dog backed away.

  With time came trust. After several weeks, Johnny ate out of Egon’s hand and slept i
n his bed with his head on Egon’s leg. Egon figured Johnny was around ten or eleven, but he looked like a puppy. There was a slight ridge on the top of his head, which Egon would rub: “We stick together, eh?” He started practicing his Americanisms on Johnny. Hands on hips, he would say, “I will teach that so-and-so a thing or two.” Or he’d put to words feelings he couldn’t admit to anyone else: “I have an aloneness I could not imagine.” No matter if Egon bent his o’s or mixed his tenses, Johnny looked up at him and thumped his tail against the floor. Egon determined that Johnny was part bulldog and part poodle, and it was Johnny who reminded him that animals don’t care where you come from. Love them well and they love you back. It was as simple as that, even in America.

  Art had many theories about the retail grocery business. In February he told Egon that when women or children came to the counter, he should offer them a free piece of American cheese. “Make it an end piece. Slice it as thin as you can. People get stuff for free, they think everything here’s a bargain.” In March he gave Egon a button to pin on his apron with THE CHEESE MAN in big capital letters, and his first name beneath it. “It becomes personal. They think they know you. Their children see you as a friend.” Art laughed. “I like it.”

  The button invited new humiliation. He had always hated his name. Ee-gon. It sounded like a cricket’s call, or the last sound a person might make after falling down a flight of stairs. In America, no one could pronounce it. Eh-gong? What kind of name is that? Egg-on? Immediately, it branded him as a foreigner. A-gong? It made coming to work each day even more onerous. Meyer didn’t help. “The Cheese Man, that’s wonderful,” he said, imitating Egon’s broken English: “‘Please, you should take a free slice of this, Ms. Fitzenheimer. Certainly, Ms. Blahblahfeld, for you a fat and juicy piece of roast beef.’”

  Weeks earlier, Egon had been waiting for a subway train when he noticed a pigeon trapped inside the station, trying to find its way out. The sound of its aimless flapping echoed through the tunnel. Egon knew the bird would never get out, and it made him want to weep. He felt like that bird every morning when he put on the button and stood behind the counter. But unlike most of Art’s theories, this one worked.